Donald Trump ran on a promise to use the powers of the government for revenge against those he believed wronged him. He now appears to be fulfilling that campaign promise while threatening to expand his powers well beyond Washington.
On Friday, the FBI searched the home of John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser-turned-critic, who last week in an interview called the administration “the retribution presidency.”
Trump’s team has opened investigations of Democrat Letitia James, the New York attorney general who sued Trump’s company over alleged fraud for falsifying records, and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who as a congressman led Trump’s first impeachment. The Republican administration has charged Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., over her actions at an immigration protest in Newark, New Jersey, after arresting Mayor Ras Baraka, also a Democrat. Under investigation, too, is former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a candidate for New York City mayor.
Trump has directed prosecutors to investigate two other members of his first administration: Miles Taylor, who wrote a book warning of what he said were Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, and Chris Krebs, who earned the president’s wrath for assuring voters that the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, was secure.
The actions look like the payback Trump said he would pursue after being hit with four separate sets of criminal charges during his four years out of office. Those included an indictment for his effort to overturn the 2020 election that was gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court, which said presidents have broad immunity from prosecution for official acts while in office.
“Joe Biden weaponized his administration to target political opponents – most famously, President Trump,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said Saturday. Trump, she said, “is restoring law and order.”
In addition to making good on his promises of retribution, Trump has deployed the military into American cities to fight crime or help with immigration arrests. He has sent thousands of National Guard troops and federal law enforcement officers to patrol the streets in the nation’s capital, after activating the Guard and Marines in Los Angeles earlier this year.
Taken together, the actions have alarmed Democrats and others who fear Trump is wielding the authority of his office to intimidate his political opponents and consolidate power in a way that is unprecedented in American history.
“You combine the threat of prosecution with armed troops in the streets,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College. “The picture is pretty clear for anyone who’s read a history book what kind of administration we’re dealing with.”
Past election investigations are a Trump focus
Trump began his second term by pardoning more than 1,500 people who were convicted of crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. His Justice Department, meanwhile, has fired some federal prosecutors who had pursued those cases. Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered a grand jury to look into the origins of the investigation of his 2016 campaign’s ties with Russia, and Trump has called on her department to investigate former Democratic President Barack Obama.
The government’s watchdog agency has opened an investigation into Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and the classified documents stashed at his Florida estate. Those cases were among several that dogged Trump in the years between his presidential terms, including the New York fraud case and charges for election interference in Georgia brought by the Democratic prosecutor in Fulton County.
All those investigations led him to claim that Democrats had weaponized the government against him.
“It is amazing to me the number of people the Trump administration has gone after, all of whom are identified by the fact that they investigated or criticized Trump in one way or another,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a former Justice Department official who is a George Washington University law professor.
On Friday, Trump used governmental powers in other ways to further his goals.
Trump has been unsuccessfully trying to wrest control of the independent Federal Reserve. After his housing director alleged that one of the central bank’s governors had committed mortgage fraud, Trump demanded she resign or be fired. He also announced that Chicago could be the next city subject to military deployments.
Trump sees himself as the ‘chief law enforcement officer’
Vice President JD Vance denied in a television interview that Bolton was being targeted because of his criticism of Trump.
“If there’s no crime here, we’re not going to prosecute it,” Vance told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Friday.
Trump said he told his staff not to inform him about the Bolton search ahead of time, but he stressed that he has authority over all prosecutions.
“I could know about it. I could be the one starting it,” the president told reporters. “I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer.”
Bolton occupies a special place in the ranks of Trump critics. The longtime GOP foreign policy hawk wrote a book published in 2020, after Trump had fired him the year before. The first Trump administration sued to block the book’s release and opened a grand jury investigation, both of which were halted by the Biden administration.
Bolton landed on a list of 60 former officials drawn up by now-FBI Director Kash Patel that he portrayed as a tally of the “Executive Branch Deep State.” Critics warned it was an “enemies list.” When Trump returned to office in January, his administration revoked the security detail that had been assigned to Bolton, who faced Iranian assassination threats.
The FBI is now investigating Bolton for potentially mishandling classified information, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly. In contrast, Trump condemned the FBI’s search of his own Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022.
Retribution is wide-ranging, from judges to the military
Trump has also targeted institutions that have defied him.
The president issued orders barring several law firms that were involved in litigation against him or his allies, or had hired his opponents, from doing business with the federal government. Trump cut deals with several other firms to do free legal work rather than face penalties. He has targeted universities for funding cuts if they do not follow his administration’s directives.
His administration filed a judicial misconduct complaint against a judge who ruled that Trump officials likely committed criminal contempt by ignoring his directive to turn around planes carrying people being sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
The actions are among steps that seem to be intensifying. Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has fired several military leaders perceived to be critics of the president or not sufficiently loyal, and earlier this week the administration revoked the security clearances of about three dozen current and former national security officials.
“It’s what he promised,” said Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official and Biden White House staffer who is a law professor at Loyola Marymount University. “It’s what bullies do when no one tells them ‘No.’”
